


Carnivore

by calicokat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Mermaid Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicokat/pseuds/calicokat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fairytale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carnivore

The harpoon strikes flesh in a gout of blood. 

The stricken creature thrashes among the waves, pale flesh and bright scales.

She disappears beneath the surface, crimson stream in her wake. 

He pursues her, hand on the tiller, his heart racing, exulting in the hunt. 

She leads him through the rocks. He cuts expertly through the choppy waters, sloop carried on the wind. Gory with blood, the dislodged harpoon washes past, left behind them. Peter Hale thrills with each glimpse of the wounded, weakening mermaid ahead of the prow – the end of his exile. 

To consume a mermaid's flesh is to become immortal, at a risk. Enmeshed with the promise of eternal life is the potential for hideous and eternal deformation.

Bald where he lay in the fire, eyelid slurred, and ear melting into the side of his head, Peter's burn-scarred appearance already elicits gasps of revulsion. He sees no downside.

The immortality he needs. 

" _So_ sorry about this, darlin'," he tells the long, wilted-finned creature floating alongside the vessel as he casts the net over her to haul her onboard. Despite her petite upper body, the mermaid lies half the length of the twenty-two foot sloop, weight taxing Peter's arms. 

His knife in hand to slit her throat, he stops in bewilderment as the girl tumbles free onto the deck.

Tangled in netting she lies strewn beneath him powerful tail draped over the side of the sloop. Her long, dark hair clings to her in wet strands, her full lips pant for air. Terrified green eyes arrest him with their silent plea.

Frozen, he reminds himself of what he stands to gain: revenge against the Argents who slaughtered his family. They burned them alive. _Him_ alive. For six years he's lived haunted by their screams, the roar of the inferno, and the sound of his own flesh sizzling and popping.

His grasp tightens on the knife. Cursing, he stabs it violently into its sheathe.

He hauls the mermaid's tail into the sloop and, briefly pressing his hand to her pallid forehead, saying _Hold on_ without knowing if she understands, leaves her lying on the deck, knowing he has to bring the boat clear of the rocks as a matter of both their survival.

He weighs anchor and returns to her. Pale, strength flagging, she remains radiant. He kneels at her wounded side. Cringing at the bloody mangle of torn flesh he made of her side, he takes her small hand in his, covering and warming it. 

He realizes for all he's read he doesn't know anything about mermaids. If she's immortal, herself.

"Tell me what to do for you."

"Come closer," she says, eyes bright.

His heart wrenches. Selfish, and furious, and stricken with grief he almost kills her, then. Gritting his teeth, tears stinging his eyes, he swallows and moves close.

In his imagination they kiss, but her lips aren't nearly so sweet. Her arms become powerful. Her sharp little teeth bury themselves in his neck, ripping at his scarred flesh. He screams.

She drinks his blood by the mouthful, then shoves him away.

Peter lies on the deck clutching his neck and swearing colorfully at the open sky. 

Revitalized, the mermaid slaps her tail alongside him. He cranes to look at her and sees her pushing herself up onto her elbows. Fear chills him. In his imagination she crawls after him to pull him apart with those strong little hands, tear out his heart, and feast.

She only shakes her hair out of her face.

She seems to have forgotten him. Looking around, she finds handholds and, fantastically strong, pulls herself one hand over the other along the deck until she's clambered onto the side of the boat. She throws herself over into the water, boat groaning as in three great, deck-splintering motions her tail propels her.

.

Seek a mermaid. Consume the heart. Take her power. Live forever. Kill the Argents.

Blood running in dirty gutters. Bloated bodies floating face down in the river, carried out to sea. Slit throats. Tinny human voices pleading for mercy that will not be delivered. The future of Peter Hale's imagination. 

Healed flesh pink on her side, the mermaid – siren – seeks consolation from her sisters. 

Fickle spirits, they offer her nothing. They swim among the rocks and sing to the winds, luring in unlucky sailor, hunt fish together, and braid coral into their hair.

In the ocean's cold depths, the mermaid burns. Skin screaming with fire dies and sloughs away again and again with no harm to her body. She seeks darker, heavier waters, her whole body scorched dry -- a human family she loves dead or dying around her.

Their screams eviscerate the silence of the deepest ocean.

Young, the mermaid has never gone ashore to dally with human men and women. Her now parched skin has never been dry. 

Now she fears the air and fears the hunger of humans she has looked on only as prey knowing now how they desire her flesh, too.

Kill the Argents.

Destroy them, and it ends.

.

She comes to him in the form of a girl in the flush of youth, walking on human legs. He awakens in his lonely room to her lying in his bed beside him, her lithe, naked body now warm.

"I remember fire," she whispers.

He fears her, lying still as she explores his scarred skin with her fingertips. Her touch lingers at the deeper, healing wound where she tore away his flesh and swallowed it raw.

"You _cursed_ me," she hisses, pretty brow pursed in pain and anger. 

He shivers beneath the thin cotton blanket despite her body heat as she traces circles over his heart.

"You know why." 

If she came to claim his heart, death at the fangs of a mermaid has always been a risk.

"I need them to pay," she says, instead.

He looks at her in wonder to find her jaw set, her eyes adamant, marvelously fierce. His chest swells with excitement. He's never been more in awe of a woman than he is of the ferocious strength of her bearing.

"I'll do anything," he swears. How freely he'd give her the life beating beneath her palm to set her loose in his place. 

Her hard nails dig furrows into his skin, scraping through the hair of his chest. She smiles, girlish.

"I'll go to them. I'll sing for them. You'll kill them, and then you'll feed me the heart of the woman who burned you," she vows.

A siren. _His_ for so cheap a price. He's never seen a more perfect creature.

Her smile remains. She presses her plush lips to his. He shuts his eyes and kisses her.

She careens forward, kissing fearlessly, caressing his face and hair, petting his chest, his stomach, and finally his cock. He arches sharply and comes at her ensorcelling touch.

_Hers,_ he slowly realizes, lying hazy and compliant in her arms. Hers as much as anyone who ever died in pursuit of her and her kin.

The girl in his bed begins to sing. He sees ships in his future, the open waves, hidden coasts, this beautiful girl and her sisters, too.

He'll lead whole crews of men to this siren, dooming them ship after wrecked ship. 

His dreams are hers. He pays in kind.


End file.
